The short answer: turn on the Plan my week routine in alfred_. Every Monday at 8 AM it emails you the week ahead across every calendar and inbox you connect: one line per day with each meeting and task due, which meetings someone turned down or hasn’t confirmed, your busiest and most open days, and up to five client emails that need you this week.
Four clients, four calendars, no plan
You’re a fractional CFO for four companies. Two of them gave you a seat on their Google Workspace, one on Microsoft 365, and the fourth just sends invites to your own Gmail. Each calendar is accurate. None of them is your week.
So Monday morning means opening four calendars, mentally stacking them, and discovering on Wednesday that the board prep for one client sits on the same afternoon as the month-end close for another. The email side is worse: the controller at the second client asked for a cash forecast by Thursday, and that email is somewhere in an inbox you checked on Friday.
The native ways, and where they stop
Overlaying calendars. Google Calendar and Outlook can each show other calendars if they’re shared with you. Client IT departments often won’t share outside their domain, and the overlay still doesn’t tell you which email needs an answer this week.
A Sunday-night review. Twenty minutes with every calendar and inbox open. It works the weeks you do it.
A planning app. Good at the tasks you put into it. The meetings and client emails still live somewhere else.
Turn on Plan my week
- Connect your calendars and inboxes to alfred_, up to six accounts: Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook, Microsoft 365, IMAP, and iCloud calendars.
- On your desktop, open Routines, then Plan my week.
- Press Turn it on.
It runs every Monday at 8 AM in your time zone, emails you the plan, and keeps past ones on the routine’s page.
What Monday’s email looks like
Your week ahead, October 27
A full week, with Wednesday the crunch.
- Mon (today): 10 AM Harbor Logistics weekly finance sync; 3 PM Brightwater intro with their new controller. Due: Harbor cash forecast draft.
- Tue: 9 AM Northside board prep; 1 PM Parkview AP review (Dana hasn’t confirmed).
- Wed: 9 AM Northside board meeting; 1 PM Harbor month-end close call; 4 PM Brightwater payroll review.
- Thu: Open until 2 PM; 2 PM Parkview check-in.
- Fri: 11 AM Harbor lender call.
- Sat: Open.
- Sun: Open.
Wednesday is the busiest, with three client meetings back to back. Thursday morning is the most open: the best place for the Harbor forecast.
Emails (2)
- Sam Ortiz, Harbor Logistics: needs the 13-week cash forecast by Thursday.
- Lisa Grant, Northside: asks for the board deck by Tuesday noon.
Suggestions
- Prepare for Wednesday’s Northside board meeting from last month’s deck and Lisa’s notes.
- Reply to Sam with the Thursday delivery time.
Illustrative example, not output from a real run. The clients and names are invented, and the wording differs week to week.
Where each step happens
- Desktop: turn it on from Routines, and read past weeks there.
- Email, Monday at 8 AM: the plan arrives before the first call.
- Phone, during the week: ask “what’s on Thursday?” or “move the Parkview check-in to Friday” by text. Changes that invite people wait for your OK.
The honest caveat
Plan my week reads only the calendars and inboxes you connect. A client calendar you can’t connect, or a meeting that lives only in a client’s system, isn’t in it. It’s a report: it suggests, it doesn’t rearrange your week or answer anyone. For a different day or time, write your own routine in a sentence. alfred_ is a paid product, and routines run on the credits your plan includes; plans are on the pricing page.
